


what rough beast (ithaca has not deceived you)

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Series: garden of succulents [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Animal Death, Birding, Borderline Personality Disorder, Coping Mechanisms, Gen, Jack's instagram, Kent and Jack rebuilding their friendship, Multi, Polyamory, Social Media, Substance Abuse, omgcp tropechallenge, self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 02:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7739422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack begins photographing the peregrine falcon that hangs around his apartment building.  Kent tries explaining how he knows so much about birds.  </p><p>They try to talk without ripping each other to pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what rough beast (ithaca has not deceived you)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who listened to me whine about this fic! And to everyone who's been so encouraging of my [Maida and Luis fic](des-zimbits.tumblr.com/tagged/maida-and-luis).
> 
> Ps. Did you know there are actually [a lot of hawks and falcons in downtown Providence?](http://www.providenceraptors.com/)

Jack keeps a camera on his bathroom vanity these days. He's too desperate to get a good picture; it's not worth the wait, the risk that if he left the room he'll miss his moment.

His bathroom view had honestly been a bit of a minus when he and his mom had looked at apartments. The converted warehouse loft had a good kitchen, great open spaces, a nice view out the front, but his mother's sole comment looking out the bathroom window had been a disparaging, "Eh." It was around the side of the building, looking out onto the blind brick wall of another warehouse and its spindly iron fire escape.

He'd been sitting on the side of the tub one day after his run, gently washing the mud out of a patch of road rash on his knee, when something streaked by in the corner of his eye. By the time he turned his head to look, there was a feathered explosion in the sky: a bird of prey hitting another bird in the air.

He knows this because then it landed on the fire escape opposite and stayed for fifteen minutes, eating its kill and preening. He'd been there for the _entire thing,_ camera pressed against his bathroom window and zoomed as far as it would go. The resulting pictures were disappointing since the outside of the window hadn't been cleaned since the last rainstorm, so he'd limited himself to sending only three to the Samwell group chat. He didn't post any to Instagram; there were little kids following that account, and the photos that didn't contain dead pigeon still contained blood.

And then the bird came back and perched on the fire escape again, and by the time Jack pulled his pants up and got his camera out of his bedroom it was gone again.

He appreciates the bathroom view in an entirely new way now. Now he's suddenly aware of all the _birds_ out there, and his inability to name them or tell them apart--scenic waterfowl aside, anything that isn't obviously a pigeon, crow, seagull, or sports mascot has heretofore been written off as _Chickadee?_ and immediately dismissed from mind.

Bittle still accepts his bird photos, but they've been banned from the SMH chat, so Jack takes them to Instagram. He's supposed to post more day-to-day pictures, anyway, but not anything too personally revealing, so he does a lot of autumn colours and ducks and birds he doesn't recognize. His Instagram followers, helpfully, fight about what kind of bird it is until there are a couple top contenders, and provide informative links to let him decide for himself. One day he posts a seagull just to see what happens.

The next time the bird of prey has lunch outside his bathroom window he takes pictures, but he's also thought about it, so the picture he shows off on Instagram is when it takes flight again afterward, tiny flecks of blood invisible on its beak. It was hard to decide because he got some really good shots, but the team PR people have recommended spacing his posts out and not doing duplicates.

The Instagram response surprises him. Some of it's normal, the same fight as always, but it's overshadowed by the comment posted five minutes after Jack put his photo up.

 **kvp90** That's an adolescent male peregrine falcon.

Kent's fans have erupted in response to him, since his identification (which Instagram consensus generally says is correct, although most people aren't sure about sex or age) is apparently more evidence that he is THE GREATEST and MY BOY. It makes Jack put the phone down and walk away from it, and use his CD player when he works out instead. He wants to bitchily snap back, _Since when did you know anything about birds?_ and the only thing stopping him is knowing that if he did it in public, it'd probably end up on Deadspin, and if he did it in private Kent would take it as permission to start talking to him again.

"It's just so typical," he finds himself telling Bitty later, pacing through his kitchen with his phone in his pyjamas and making a cup of camomile tea. "I find something to get interested in, and he's already an expert in it."

"Sweetheart," Bitty says sympathetically, an entire sentence in itself. "They were great pictures, though."

* * *

 

Jack accepts, with deepest reservations, Kent's offer of a meeting after the Falcs-Aces game. He does it since he and his therapist have strategized a basic behavioural program when it comes to Kent and boundaries. Jack's going to stop rewarding Kent with attention when he does something like showing up unannounced or using someone else's phone to call him. On the other hand, he's going to try systematically rewarding good behaviour. Good behaviour like emailing Jack a week beforehand and saying, _Can I buy you a bowl of carbs, 10pm next Thursday? Don't wanna keep you out too late but we leave really early the next morning. You pick the place._

So okay, he'll stay up past his bedtime.

Kent looks nervous and uncertain when Jack appears on the restaurant's second floor behind the waiter. He doesn't look like someone who just won a hockey game; he looks like someone waiting to hear if the bank manager's going to approve a loan he can't afford. His leg stops jiggling, though.

 _I don't think it's realistic to expect us to be friends again,_ he'd said. _But we could try being friendly._

"More iced tea?" the waiter asks Kent as Jack slips into his chair. Kent nods, smiles tightly. "What can I get for you?"

"Just water," Jack says. The waiter leaves them floating in his wake, the two of them awkwardly looking anywhere but at each other. Kent fishes for ice in the bottom of his empty glass with a straw. Jack flips his menu open.

"So, uh," Kent says finally, after crunching his ice into oblivion. "I... don't really have, like. A plan. Or an agenda. But we're gonna be running into each other a lot more often now, and I guess it's a good idea to have good... diplomatic relations."

"Kent," Jack says tiredly, "I don't hate you."

Kent freezes up in a way that lets Jack know that's exactly what Kent was thinking, and Jack sighs inwardly. He's searching for something to say as Kent digs more ice out of his glass, then offers, "Pretty much... every time I've talked to you, over the last year before now, has been against the advice of... everyone I trust to give me advice. I know I'm fucking up around you, Jack. It's like... there's this berserk button in my head and you're the person with the access codes. And I don't wanna blame you for it, it's probably just... developmental... circumstance shit, it's not your fault. And it's not an excuse." He tips the last of the ice into his palm and wraps his fingers around it, the melting water streaming between his fingers and onto his suit pants when he lowers his fist to his leg. "I just really understand if you don't want to be around me, because I don't know how to behave sanely around you."

"Kenny," Jack asks, because he can't not. "What are you doing with that ice?"

Kent smiles like a tight-clutched grimace, speaking between gritted teeth. "You cope your way, Zimms," he grinds out. "I'll cope mine."

The waiter comes back, taking away Kent's old glass and setting out drinks for them both, and takes their orders. Kent's face smooths out into a polished mask, disturbingly sunny and charming, as he orders ginger beef in a bowl of rice; Jack gets fettucine alfredo with chicken. By the time the waiter walks away, Kent is wiping his empty hands dry with a napkin and taking deep breaths.

He only glances at Jack, mostly keeps his face down, focusing on his hands, putting the napkin down into his lap, running his thumbnail across his other fingertips. "It's a Borderline thing," he says to his hands, then reaches out for his iced tea and takes a drink. "The ice helps me calm down. It's... endorphins. Anyway. I learned it in therapy."

"That would really not calm me down," Jack says frankly.

Kent swallows. "Yeah, well, as I recall, you didn't used to cut yourself."

Jack is momentarily stunned. Yeah, he knew that was something Kent had done once, as a teenager; he hadn't thought about it in years. It hadn't seemed like an issue. "You mean you still--"

Kent sighs, rolls his shoulders, cups both hands around his glass. "Let's just say, I... went through a lot of shit that I never wanted you to know about, because you..." He scrubs hand over his face, to control its trembling, and speaks from behind his palm with a voice that's rough, pushed out past a block. "You were supposed to be my bright shiny future, where I didn't have to _deal_ with any of that anymore."

"I'm sorry," Jack says, the only thing he knows how to say.

"Yeah, and," Kent says, putting his elbow on the table, rests his forehead against his hand, looking away from him, "as it turns out, you don't actually _get_ to just ignore and not deal with... that kind of stuff. So, you know. I see a psychologist. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm trying to... cope."

"Kenny," Jack says helplessly, feeling like he's on the other side of a gulf with someone suffering on the other side. Kent always seemed so _together_ , so strong; he was always the one who kept his cool under fire, who was calm when everyone else was losing it, who seemed to regard other people’s problems as the suffering of people who just couldn't tough it out the way he could. Unless something made him mad enough to blow his stack, he was always calm, always confident, always poised.

So Jack at nineteen had thought, _Kenny'll be fine without me._

"I'm sorry I didn't notice," he says.

Kent smiles bitterly. "I worked really hard to _keep_ you from noticing. You had your own shit to deal with."

Jack has trouble pushing out any of the other words that crowd his mind, trying to balance this new information with the knowledge of how absolutely little he was capable of back then, how he's not sure he's capable of much _now_ , and then the memory that's made him forgive Kent a lot, how much Kent had been there for him during the worst moments. Unquestioningly, unwaveringly _there._

"Do you... want to talk about it?" he tries.

"No." Kent shakes his head, makes a swatting gesture, looking for a moment like his grandmother. "I don't wanna load you down with that, Zimms." He smiles at Jack, almost a little desperate, like his eyes are saying _Get me outta here._ "Don't worry about it, okay? That's my shit to handle, and it's more an explanation of why I go batshit on you sometimes than anything else. Forget about it."

Jack hesitates, loath to play along with Kent's dismissal and just give up on the topic, but on the other hand: Even he, who's not good at reading people, can tell how screamingly uncomfortable Kent is under the surface and how much he wishes he could escape this conversation. He wishes he had Bitty's gift of setting people at ease, pouring out a measure of words to soothe and distract, make Kent relax again and look the way he does with his team.

"So, uh," he says, fumbling for words. His phone buzzes in his pocket and in a burst of sudden inspiration he says, "Since when do you know so much about birds?"

"Oh, right," Kent says, looking desperately grateful. "Your peregrine, right? The Falconers' falcon. You see much of that guy?"

"Yeah," Jack agrees. He pulls out his phone, swiping past his notifications and going into one of his albums. "PR says not to go overboard on the wildlife photography, so I'm thinking about getting a... Flickr? That seems to be what people are using. Here, you can go through that whole album if you want."

"I don't really know anything about birds," Kent confesses, swiping through pictures of the peregrine devouring a rat. "Oh, my god. Ugh. Yeah, anyway. I was sitting with someone who works for a wildlife rehab when your Insta popped up, and she just leaned over like, 'oh, that's what it is.'" He leans back, fishing in his pocket for his own phone, and types into it for a minute before passing it over to Jack. "Here's the account she runs for work."

Jack takes the phone gingerly, carefully trying not to touch the wrong thing on the screen. It's a Twitter, @NevadaRaptors, for the Nevada Raptor Sanctuary. The Tweets have links and pictures for things like, '2yo turkey vulture rehab' and 'Cooper's Hawk hunt training'. "How do you know her?"

"We're... kinda dating," Kent says in a very small voice, which fades into silence when the waiter brings dinner. Jack waits for him to set their bowls down, dispense Parmesan, and satisfy himself that they're okay to commence dining before he presses the matter.

"Dating?" he asks, picking up his fork.

Kent takes back his phone, flicking through it even as he picks up the enameled chopsticks with his other hand and begins eating his ginger beef. After an extensive search he slides it back across the table.

Jack picks it up and examines the screen closely. Kent, sitting on a step with two other people; Kent's relaxed, in a baggy tank top and basketball shorts, cap on backwards, next to a guy with dark hair and a smile, holding a guitar the way you would for playing though his fingers are relaxed. On the end is a woman in a purple summer dress, face obscured by the middle finger she's flipping off at the camera.

"She doesn't like pictures of herself," Kent mumbles apologetically. "And especially not for me to keep them on my phone."

Jack nods, looking down at the picture. "Who's in the middle here?"

"My boyfriend," Kent says, so quietly Jack almost misses it.

Jack pauses, looking down at the three of them, feeling the need to be careful here. "So they... know about each other, eh?"

"They were dating when I met them," Kent says, looking at the picture with a hint of softness. "So the three of us, it... works out."

Jack swallows words, looking at them, looking at Kent. _You don't need to have an opinion on everything,_ he thinks to himself. And if he did, he'd have to take into account the look on Kent's face when he thinks about them.

And, it suddenly occurs to him, the fact that Kent only has one picture of his girlfriend on his phone. Kent, the Instagram king. Kent, whose relationship status is always a rumour and never a confirmation, who's always denying liaisons with tabloid celebrities. The rags would go into a feeding frenzy over something like this, over something small and soft and hard to explain.

Kent told Jack where his girlfriend works. Kent just laid his heart open.

_I don't know how to be sane around you._

So Jack turns the phone on the table with one finger, so its picture is oriented back to Kent, and gently says, "Would you... tell me about them?"

Kent's face lights up, in the gaps between the eyeholes of his mask and his eyes, and he does. The more he talks, the steadier he sounds. By the time Jack's drinking his decaf and Kent's drinking his passionfruit tea, as though they've learned how not to punish their bodies anymore, he almost looks like he's had a good night.

* * *

 

Kent, in the cab to his hotel after, texts his girlfriend: _Zimms isn't into the poly thing. Kind of weirded out by it tbh._

 _You ok?_ Maida replies. _You drunk? You somewhere safe?_

 _Cool it, Luis,_ he sends back. Their boyfriend asks questions like that, always makes sure Kent is safe and stable and self-regulated. It's an infectious habit, and it annoys Kent when he finds himself using it on other people, or giving himself away with AA aphorisms. It makes him feel uncomfortably like the adults he used to dodge when he was a teenager. And he called Maida and not Luis because he doesn't want to do the serious emotional debriefing tonight.

He calls her when he steps out of the taxi. "Hey, baby," she says, simultaneously worried and upbeat.

"I drank tea and nobody cried," he says, walking through the hotel lobby. "It went... okay. Ah, crap, I should take the elevator, I might cut out for a minute." Because he likes to take the stairs; there's almost never a time he doesn't want to add cardio into his day. On the other hand, he knows enough now that he doesn't want to get his heart rate up, not when there's a lot of emotional crap he's dealing with. "I'm in the hotel, just getting back. I'll be in my room in a minute."

"Okay," she says, and they stay on the phone while he waits for the elevator and rides up to his floor, Maida occasionally humming tunelessly, but otherwise just the crackle of noise on the line between them.

"So, like," he says when he shuts the door behind him, tossing his wallet onto the single bed that is his privilege as Captain. "It went good, we talked, you know, it was survivable. And he just seemed kind of off about the poly thing? And the pagan thing. It was like, until I talked to him I didn't really realize how much I've _done_ since we were together."

It was as though he'd spent years trying to keep himself busy and numb, nerveless, full of distractions and mindless attempts to cope with the pain; and then, when he'd told them all over again to Jack, they went from cotton batting packed into a gaping wound, into shining crystal cave-formations, a _life_ , the music festivals, the bands he knew, the chords he could play, the gods he worshipped, the people he loved.

"So I had this crazy thought, like, one of those stupid ones that just pops up. Don't take it seriously. But it was like, 'Oh, he doesn't like poly, maybe if I just dumped everyone he'd take me back again.' But like, the _moment_ I thought that, I was like, it wouldn't even be worth it. It's like I looked at him and suddenly I was like... you are a _boring_ nerd killjoy who doesn't communicate and lives in a shitty town. No way would I want to date you. No way would I give up what I have for you."

"Fuck him, hey," Maida says, sweet and quiet and steady.

"Or don't fuck him." He laughs, venting stress, and repeats, "Or don't."

"Don't fuck him then," she agrees. "So, me and you are still on for this weekend?"

"Yeah," he says, weirdly surprised and touched that she still has to ask. "Always. I love you."

"Love you too, baby," she tells him.

"Yeah. Leave a note for Luis too, okay?"

So he knows that late tonight, early next morning, not long before Kent gets up to catch his flight home to Vegas, Luis will come home from his bartending job, smelling like beer and still faintly buzzing from the energy, and find a piece of paper on the kitchen table:

_Kent loves you._

* * *

 

Kent's girlfriend Maida is the first person Jack asks when he notices the falcon hasn't moved from the fire escape for over a day. She comes up with a number to the Rhode Island Audubon Society.

"Hi, my name is Jack Zimmermann, and I'm calling about this falcon..."

"Zimmermann!" the man says. "Is it the peregrine out of the old flour sack factory? We've had a few other sightings of it, but you seem to have the most consistent vantage."

Jack silently closes and opens his mouth, then ploughs ahead. "I think it's sick. It's been in the same place since yesterday, and I have a friend who's a falconer, and she says..."

"Oh, of course! I can come out and take a look. Are you free this evening?"

"I'm, ah, I have a game tonight, so I don't really think I can."

"A... game," the man repeats.

"A hockey game," Jack says. Silence. He tries again, "I play hockey."

"Oh, is this a recreational thing, or...?" the man says, in the voice of someone who doesn't understand why _hockey_ should get in the way of _sick falcons._

"For the Falconers." He's not used to having to explain this, especially not to people who know his name, who apparently follow his Instagram. He almost feels offended. "In the National Hockey League."

"Oh, the Falconers," the man says, warming tentatively. "Oh, yes, I guess that must... I'll have to see who we can get to photograph. So tell me, where did you see the bird?"

The team's PR people follow the fate of Peregrine 13 intently. To celebrate the end of a successful course of intravenous antibiotics, they launch a fundraising campaign in concert with the sanctuary taking care of him and give donors the ability to vote on his name.

"It's Zoomermann," their coach announces at practice, and the team buries Jack in chirps.

 _This is how I ended up with a cat named Kit Purrson,_ Kent writes him. _I've learned my lesson. Name early or Twitter will fucking name it for you. On the other hand, getting your mascot named after you is good insurance against getting traded._

When he's over his infection the team wants their falcon to move from the sanctuary to a nest on top of the Dunkin Donuts centre, but the bird people all explain very seriously that the arena is already in the territory of another peregrine, and also, raptors and nests don't work like that; but Jack listens to their explanation and convinces his strata to allow the installation of a nesting box on his building's roof.

Zoomie and his girlfriend fledge three chicks from their nest, and small, inexperienced birds launching themselves from Jack's roof to the factory fire escape become a regular sight out his bathroom window. The small but fervent group of people who husband Providence's urban raptor population meet up in a bar regularly for Falconers games, but Jack, due to scheduling conflicts, has been rarely able to attend. He's more hopeful about his ability to in the summer.

Jack flies down to Las Vegas a bit early for the NHL awards in July, and Maida gives him a tour of the Nevada Raptor Sanctuary. He barely recognizes her when they meet again a few days later; she's been transformed from a tired and dusty woman to a spectacle of couture who complains sotto voce about her shoes. He and Parse stand together for a picture and don't talk about the boyfriends they didn't bring. They have a solid repertoire of safe topics they can talk about now.

Parse snaps a picture on the fly, the next day when Jack comes by to his apartment for brunch before he leaves. He's never taken a university course on photography, but Parse is, of course, no slouch. Jack's leaning back in the photograph, looking like he's trying to listen instead of fall asleep, but Luis is telling a story, his hands in the air, and Maida's eyes are crinkled up like she's just about to laugh. Something about the light, the very slight tilt of the photo, makes it look ordinary on the surface but keeps drawing the eye back.

"I'd take a bullet for you, Zimms," Parse says, clapping him on the back. "But thank god, the position of Weird Bird Fanatic in my life is already taken."

"Transition," Jack says down at the photograph, looking at the way the shadow on the wall ends, the sunlight that falls on two of the figures and not on him. That's what it is that keeps making him look: the sense of movement, the sense of narrative.

Dammit, but Kent's gonna spend his entire life making Jack want to go back to work on the things that matter to him so he can catch up with the man who does it all so naturally.

Then he processes what Kent actually said, feels bad for missing a reference to this, their circle of love-grief-wrong-apology, the emotional freight. The things Bitty talks about until Jack understands, the things Kent just slips by him.

"I'm glad you have these two to love you," he says. He looks at them. "You guys probably do a better job than I did."

Luis puts a hand on Maida's shoulder without looking, smiles wryly at Jack while Maida looks off at Kent.

"We try," he says.


End file.
